Posted on 07/05/2004 12:52:37 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
The head of the National Education Association opened the largest school union's annual convention yesterday with a call for public school teachers and employees to mobilize politically to help defeat President Bush this fall.
"I know that if we put forth our best effort, we are going to win," Reg Weaver told a cheering audience in a 30-minute speech in which he criticized Mr. Bush and Education Secretary Rod Paige.
"Our 2.7 million members can be the 'X-factor' in this election. We and our pro-public-education allies can and will make a decisive difference," he said.
The convention votes tomorrow on the NEA's endorsement of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. The Massachusetts senator is scheduled to address the convention tomorrow.
The union is collaborating with the liberal organization MoveOn.org to coordinate nationwide political "house parties."
The parties, described as "the largest mobilization for education ever" are being organized nationwide to plan political rallies, register voters, set up meetings with congressional candidates, "and design a program to make sure your parents, teachers and community members will get to the polls in November," according to brochures distributed to 10,000 NEA delegates at the Washington Convention Center.
The union had sign-up cards for the house parties, and NEA political action committee staffers recruited delegates all day yesterday to participate and make political donations in an adjoining cafeteria.
At about 2 p.m. yesterday, screens and TV monitors throughout the convention floor flashed the names of five leading states — California, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Washington — whose delegates had ponied up a total of $1.57 million to date in political contributions.
The sign-up brochure described as sponsoring "partner organizations" ACORN, the Campaign for America's Future and MoveOn.org.
"We thought it was an activity that could galvanize our members to help fix and fund [the] No Child Left Behind [Act of 2001]," Mr. Weaver told The Washington Times during a convention recess.
"I'm trying to activate our members. I'm about mobilizing and stimulating our folks" so that the school union's political activism "takes center stage" for the remainder of the presidential campaign, he said.
Yesterday, union officials distributed 10,000 fliers to individual state caucuses informing them that filmmaker Michael Moore's anti-Bush film, "Fahrenheit 9/11," would be shown to delegates in the convention hall tomorrow immediately after Mr. Kerry's speech.
The announcement of the showing and the strongly anti-Bush tone of the convention brought grumbling from Republican members, who make up more than one-fourth of the union's total membership.
One such member, Sissy Jochmann from the Pennsylvania delegation, called the Moore film "vicious" and said she would publicly call for "a timeout" if union leaders and members continued "bullying us with all their anti-Bush and anti-Republican rhetoric."
Even liberal political commentator Christopher Hitchens, who was an Oxford University friend and roommate of President Clinton's during the 1970s, has described "Fahrenheit 9/11" as "a big lie and a big misrepresentation."
The film claims that terrorist Osama bin Laden's family had a close business relationship with Mr. Bush's family and that the wars to liberate Afghanistan and Iraq were motivated by greed.
Mr. Weaver defended NEA's showing of the film, which the flier said was donated by Mr. Moore so the union could raise more political funds. Delegates have been asked to contribute $20 to the NEA PAC to see the film.
"Some delegates from Wisconsin were sitting around at dinner the other night and said, 'Wouldn't it be great to have [the film] at the NEA Representative Assembly,' " Mr. Weaver said.
"People contacted members of the California delegation. The next thing I knew, we got it. It's voluntary. If people don't want to watch it, they don't have to," the union president said.
In his speech, Mr. Weaver repeated his complaint that the administration has refused to accept NEA positions and "the expertise that this organization brings to the table."
Mr. Weaver chastised the administration for "broken promises" to fully fund the No Child Left Behind law. "This administration wants to cut you off at the knees, and then blame you for not being able to walk," he said.
He attacked government spending for the military action against deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
"For what we have paid for the war in Iraq, we could have paid for 17,066,831 children to attend Head Start; provided health insurance for 51,741,858 children; hired 2,299,310 additional teachers; paid for 3,061,859 four-year scholarships to a public university," he said.
And he repeated the NEA's attack against the administration's federal school-reform program that was enacted by a bipartisan congressional majority.
"There is no way around it: No Child Left Behind forces us to spend money we don't have, on programs we don't need, to get results that don't matter."
Republicans have disputed the NEA's claims regarding underfunding of the Title I school program for low-income school districts, saying federal spending has increased 51 percent since Mr. Bush took office. Title I spending was $8.8 billion in the final Clinton administration budget and is $13.3 billion this year.
Save your anger for your union. Teaching in public schools shores up the LIBERAL monopoly of education.
Exactly, and well said. Dittoes here.
My wife is a teacher and belongs to the NEA but always gets the PAC portion of the dues returned to her. She is appalled and furious that Moore's garbage is being run at the national convention. Said it made her feel the same way she'd feel if the NEA had decided to have someone like the leader of the KKK as keynote speaker. Sad to say but boneheaded decisions like that by the NEA leadership negatively affect local bond issues and tar even teachers who disagree with the boneheads.
Well, I did no such thing. If you are an NEA member you should stand up for your beliefs and quit.
You have as much chance of influencing the NEA as I do of changing the policy of the VPC.
I agree. I also know many conservative teachers. My argument is with the NEA and laws which for all practical purposes require teachers to belong.
The NEA is not even a union. When is the last time you were allowed to vote for your local business agent? The business agent function is assumed by the Uniserve who is appointed from on high by the powers that be, not democratically elected by local teachers. NEA is a political organization, pure and simple. It is set up in such a manner as to stifle the political voices of the many dues paying conservative teachers such as yourself.
It's just as accurate as some of the other stuff they teach?
School teachers mobilize politically to help defeat President Bush this fall.
And these are the people that we are trusting to teach our children?
I'm getting tried of being put on a guilt trip because teachers believe they are social saints.
I thank god every day I never had kids.
Build a headquarters for social entrepreneurs. Housing creative, committed people and organizations under one roof would promote collaboration and innovation.
Offer social entrepreneurial fellowships. Providing Boston area college, business, law, and medicine graduates the opportunity to compete for two-year social entrepreneurial fellowships and loan forgiveness programs will encourage new generations of young leaders to act on their idealism.
Require service and civic curriculums. Boston's colleges and universities, which shape the minds of tomorrow's global leaders, should require students to engage in community service in Boston's neighborhoods and increase the work study allocation for service from 7 to 25 percent to enable all students to do so. Additionally, colleges should emphasize citizenship and public service in their curriculums.
Scale community service initiatives. Since community service experiences are where many new civic ideas are born, Boston should become an "All Star service city," with at least 20 percent of our young people participating in a year of fulltime service, and all elementary, middle, and high schools in the metro region adopting comprehensive community service programs.***
You must not have gone to public school. I attended in the 1980's where I learned that Ronald Reagan was frightening and the USSR was maligned, among other things. If I had not had an alternative view to consider at home, I might be one of those ignorant Mooreites.
One of the best things we could do for this country (and the worst things for the Democrats) would be to eliminate public schools. It would be worth it even if taxes were used to reimburse some parents the cost of private school. The teachers would be the same, of course, but at least parents could shop around, and it would be students, rather than bad schools that would be guaranteed funds.
"Triumph of the Will," would be shown to delegates in the convention hall tomorrow immediately after Mr. Kerry's speech.
I went to Catholic school until I was 8 and then went to public schools but I think I'm older than you. Also, the schools were in upstate New York until I was a teenager and upstate was and still is fairly conservative.
Teacher bias in the 50's and 60's didn't seem as blatant to me as it seems now.
David Horowitz is working with members of Congress to introduce legislation that would require a more fair and balanced curriculum in colleges; it looks like he should take a look at the lower grades as well.
What are "social entrepreneurs"? Sounds like some sort of bastardization of the English language, like "sex workers" or "undocumented workers" or some such thing.
The NEA has turned the public schools into Hitler's Brown Shirt Factory. They don't want the kids to even know there is a Constitution and a Bill of Rights much less know what they say.
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